Samsung, Nokia and other mobile vendors in 5G trials

NTT Docomo, a Japanese mobile solutions provider, is working with mobile technology vendors Nokia, Samsung, Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Fujitsu and NEC to conduct trials of emerging 5G mobile communications, in a bid to be ready for commercial deployment by 2020.

The company said that the trials will seek to confirm the potential of 5G mobile technologies to exploit frequency bands above 6GHz, as well as realising high system capacity per unit area and new radio technologies to support various types of applications. It said it would collaborate with other companies in its effort to test "a wide range of 5G mobile technologies".

Docomo wants to deploy 5G with speeds of up to 10Gbps, compared with today's 4G LTE speeds which reach a maximum of 150Mbps.

The firm will begin indoor trials at its R&D centre in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture this year, followed by outdoor field trials scheduled for next year. Key findings will be shared with research institutes and international conferences to help contribute to a standardisation of 5G.

"5G studies are starting to gain real momentum as we point toward 2020," said Seizo Onoe, executive vice president and CTO at Docomo.

"I am delighted that we will collaborate on 5G experimental trials with multiple global vendors from this early stage."

Docomo is not the only firm to be working on 5G technology. Chinese telecoms giant Huawei said it was readying 5G technology for use by 2020, and Docomo partner Samsung claimed to have developed the core technology behind 5G mobile telecommunications back in May 2013.

Meanwhile, in November last year, UK communications regulator Ofcom said that it had identified a number of spectrum bands that could be used for 5G mobile broadband.

The new spectrum represents seven times the amount released for the UK's 4G auction, and could expand mobile data capacity by 25 times that of current capacity between now and 2030, the regulator estimated.

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